I would have to be inhuman not to feel a connection—not to see a connection.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Looking for patterns that aren’t there.
According to the medical examiner’s report, the victim was stabbed eight times. Rib cage to pelvis. Although that is an alarming near resemblance, Rhys would point out the disparities. The biggest of which is: There was no lateral laceration to her sternum.
As for the absent white lotuses… The crime scene landscape is not an indicator; it’s based on the MO, or motive. The kill method. The victimology.
Which I’ve pursued all before in search of my killer. I’ve exhausted the parameters.
Against my acutely logical disposition, I even sought out a dream interpreter. To see if they could knock loose the suppressed memories. It failed, of course. My dream was not a premonition. It was conjured out of fear—fear of losing Drew.
I don’t believe in omens.
Past and present touch at different moments in our lives, like a blade of grass arcing in on itself. Events repeating. A scene already lived in a dream. Some refer to this as deja vu. Or a past life experience.
I find if I explore hard enough, I can always find an explanation.
Like Baader-Meinhof phenomenon; frequency illusion. My mind tries to form a pattern because it’s engineered to do so. After the attack, I saw white lotuses everywhere. They haunted me.
Of course, I lived in Florida. Phenomenon or inevitability?
Clearly, I’m not sentimental. I don’t give credence to fate or chance, and most phenomena can be explained away. Like, I probably never noticed them as much before. Prior to the event, a white lotus held no significance for me. It’s as simple as that.
So I’ve accepted my new quest. Knowledge. Enlightenment. To uncover the mystery. If not for me, for others—to solve the riddle and bring them closure.
This is how I got into true crime writing. Documenting closure is as close to the real thing as I may ever get.
I shake out my hands, blow a forceful breath from my lungs. “It’s not my story.” I’ll keep uttering these words, like a rehearsal. “It’s about finding the victim’s killer.” Not mine.
Because that’s the missing part, the link. The jagged puzzle piece that will eventually slip into place, giving me that moment of completion. Peace.
I start a new paragraph.
How did he select her?
The killer’s link to the victim is always a mystery…until it’s not. Like the ending to almost a
ny story, it’s never very imaginative. Wrong place, wrong girl. What other reason could anyone have in taking Joanna Delany from this world in such a cruel way?
Rhys and I will link the killer to the victim. No matter how tenuous, there’s always a nexus. They may have never crossed paths before, or they may have seen each other every day. No matter where the maze starts, both killer and victim are connected on a visceral level now. They are connected in a way that most people will never fully understand.
This thought consumes me, and I stare at the page on the screen, not really seeing it. The screen wavers at the edges, and I blink hard. Rub my eyes.
A flash of his hand reaching through the water...and then it’s gone.
This time, I set my laptop on the hardwood floor and trek to my cluttered desk, grabbing a sheet from the printer tray.
I sketch an outline of the flower, its stalk descending into the depths like a wiry tentacle. I recall, in that fleeting moment, thinking how rare it was to see a red lotus. It wasn’t red, of course. White tinged with my blood, a death filter, the inky color clouding the water.
My hand stills over the outline of a man, his features blank. A throb pulses at my temples as I strain to recall…
Nothing.
Sometimes, when this moment surfaces in a dream, the face is of Officer Dutton. The first person I recall seeing afterward, when I awoke in the hospital room. Other times it’s Drew, my college professor and ex-boyfriend. The face takes on different features, different people from my life, always elusive.
I curse and set the pencil down.
Today is no different.